So, honestly, can any interstate in the country beat three stars?
This one comes close. Ah, the glory of Burque life. Forget you, Austin. Phoenix. Chicago. San Francisco. DC. Denver, Miami, Minneapolis. Who am I kidding? Burque is none of these cities. So who measures up? Kansas City? Salt Lake? Colorado Springs? Hard to say. Welcome to the desert, friends. We do this thang with two interstates, and we get point-to-point in 20 minutes maximum, unless we're hitting Rio Rancho. We jettin' Uptown, Downtown and cross-town like you won't believe, because aside from a little slow-down in the morning and a few yawns in the afternoon, we don't have traffic. Want a great reason to live here? The commute. Long as you have a car, that is.
My peeves about this freeway are geographic and otherwise gov'ment based. First off, you only got two routes, so if shit goes down on the 40, and you need to get somewhere, you're screwed. And shit goes down in all sorts of ways. When we get "weather", meaning precipitation in any of its various forms, our residents freak out. We slow down to a crawl or we speed up so fast we don't know what to do. Months of unwashed petroleum suddenly spreads like a virus across the pavement and screw with otherwise sensible tire tread, sprawling us across turn lanes. It can get ugly. Major word of caution, visitors: if it's actually raining, take it very, very easy.
And concerning this freeway in particular: why do the cops shut it down, completely, for a fender-bender? Like, I get that accidents happen and we need to heed safety first, but I've seen this sucker completely shut down for the most menial of events. Two or three cars break bad and all of a sudden the entire stretch of highway, Unser to Carlisle, is a ghost town. I don't get it. Why not just shut down a couple of lanes?
Oh, another thing that makes this freeway interesting: the tumbleweed snowman. That, too, must be Yelped. read more
